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Council Controversy: Union Disagreement Regarding Chief Goes Back Many Years

Fire union officials said
this week they will be filing a new grievance with the state after the City
went against their wishes to promote Chief Tony Carli before the conclusion of
a long-standing labor dispute – a dispute they said had everything to do with
the choice of the chief and the ability of every union member to get a fair
shot at the post.

Virtually no one but those
in the administration and those within the union knew of the unfair labor
practice complaint that is outstanding at the Department of Labor now – a
complaint whereby briefs have been filed and they are waiting on a judge to
rule in the case. However, that case came front and center for the first time
on Monday, to the surprise of many.

“This thing has been a sham
from the go,” said Fire Union President Craig Hardy, who is also an officer
with the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts (PFFM). “We don’t bring our
dirty laundry to the City Council. We don’t get them involved with grievances
at all. What you see is they snuck this in and got it on the agenda without us
knowing…

“It’s really nothing
personal,” he told the Independent. “We just wanted the City to delay the vote
until they could educate themselves on this issue and wait for the new chief’s
exam so some of the deputy chiefs have a shot at being chief. There has never
been an Assessment Center for chief in Everett. This was the first time. We’re
putting another grievance in today because what they did last night was a
violation of our contract. We don’t want to just boot the chief. It’s not us
against him.”

Hardy mentioned they have a
current unfair labor practice complaint before the Department of Labor. Briefs
were just filed in that this month, and a judge is due to rule on the case at
some point. That case involves the union claiming that the City needed to
collectively bargain for the use of an Assessment Center instead of a Chief’s
Exam. They claim it is a change in working conditions, and the City disagrees.

“We asked the City to wait
for that ruling and they ended up trying to make this appointment on the rush,”
he said. “We didn’t find out about this until last Thursday. What City
Solicitor Keith Slattery said on Monday at the Council didn’t add up to me…Our
assumption is they pushed this because they know this Chief’s Exam is coming
out and they don’t want to do that because they don’t want to call for that
test.”

City officials indicated
there was a Civil Service complaint filed by the union last year following the
conclusion of the Assessment Center. It protested the use of the Assessment
Center and alleged there was an unfair advantage for Chief Carli – as he was
given advance notice and allegedly had an inside track on the process.

However, that complaint
finding was not in the union’s favor, and Civil Service did not feel that there
was enough to merit an investigation. With that resolved in June, City
officials said they began to move to make Chief Carli permanent.

City Solicitor Colleen Mejia
said the position is a non-union position appointed by the mayor, and it didn’t
require union input.

“The City’s position is we
absolutely do not need their input regarding the mayor’s appointment of a
non-union department head,” she said. “The (Department of Labor) complaint is
about impact bargaining on their contract. It has no impact on the mayor’s
ability to hire a non-union department head…We have a management right to do
it.”

She added the chief’s
position is not within the union, and therefore is not under the union contract
or protected by the union contract. That, she said, would make the threat of a
new grievance moot.

City officials – unlike
union officials – said they know of no Chief’s test that is coming up. In fact,
Mejia said the trend now is for non-union public safety officials to be chosen
by an Assessment Center rather than a written test.

“Civil Service had not
called for a Civil Service exam in years and Chief Butler had been on the job
for 16 years,” said Mejia. “Chief Butler retired, we needed a chief and there
wasn’t an exam on the horizon. So, we used the Assessment Center…Civil Service
isn’t interested in giving Chief’s exams anymore. They haven’t given one.
That’s the information we have.”

Hardy says different, and
said the state union has been pushing for the test and that one is pending for
2020. He said study materials for that test are coming out in a couple of
weeks. Nothing official, though, has been posted on the state’s Civil Service
Website in doing a quick search of announced tests.

The bottom line in the
situation is the process has been disputed by the union since 2016 when Chief
Carli was first picked as a provisional chief. Hardy and Union
Secretary/Treasurer Sean Hogan said past practice has always been to choose the
most senior deputy chief to be the provisional. In this case, Carli was picked
by the mayor and he was the deputy chief with the least seniority – jumping
over several others.

Union officials said that
gave him an unfair advantage in that, once chief, he knew there would be an
Assessment Center. While Union officials claim Chief Carli was the point of
contact in setting up the perameters of the Center, City officials said that
was patently false. They said the point of contact in setting up the Center was
the former Human Resources director, not Carli.

However, prior to the
announcement of the Center to everyone, Carli did receive e-mails asking for
information about Assessment Centers.

“Chief Carli was not the
point of contact; it was Human Resources,” said Mejia. “That would have been a
conflict. The Civil Service decision said there was no conflict…They all got a
fair shot, they all got the same notice and they all went through the same
assessment…(Chief Carli) was sent e-mails for information from the former Human
Resources director, but he wasn’t involved.”

Hogan said that is the crux
of much of the problem on this issue – that the chief had an idea this was
going to be used while others did not.

“There were 42 days for people
besides Tony Carli to prepare,” he said. “Tony Carli knew it was happening for
some time. Typically you would have eight months to two years to prepare…It was
a clear, unfair advantage.”

That was something that Civil Service
disagreed with, but union officials believe there is merit to it, and said they
were “shocked” at last summer’s ruling.